By Jessie L. Moore, Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, and Tim Peeples

Mentoring matters for student success. Mentoring promotes academic, social, personal, cultural, and career-focused learning and development in intentional, sustained, and integrative ways. As a result, mentoring contributes positively to academic outcomes such as persistence and grades, as well as developmental outcomes such as college adjustment (Crisp et al. 2017).

In a 2024 national survey conducted by the Center for Engaged Learning, recent college graduates were more likely to consider college somewhat or very rewarding if they had one or more mentors during college. Similarly, recent graduates who had one or more mentoring relationships that promoted their learning and development, evolved over time becoming more mutually beneficial, and were individualized to their strengths and goals were more likely to consider college probably or definitely worth their time and financial commitment. In addition, 51.8% of the survey participants thought relationships in college were very or extremely important to their college success.

In 2014, a Gallup study of over 30,000 U.S. college graduates found that alumni who reported having a mentor in college, someone who cared about them and encouraged them to reach their goals, also were more likely to be thriving in their well-being and engaged in their jobs (Ray and Marken). Understandably, then, mentoring is increasingly recognized as a critical component of student success during and after college. Mentoring matters, and higher education should be doing more to facilitate these relationships.

Mentoring Matters – and Higher Education is Coming Up Short

In the 2014 Gallup study only 22% strongly agreed they had a mentor “who encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams” (Ray and Marken). Recent research on meaningful relationships, which are necessary for and have the potential to develop into mentoring relationships, found that only 55% of over 1800 U.S. college graduates reported having meaningful relationships with faculty and staff, and 69% with peers (Moore et al. 2022).

Like mentoring relationships, meaningful relationships positively contribute to students’ college experience. Meaningful relationships can:

• contribute to the “high-impact” nature of educational practices like capstone experiences, learning communities, and undergraduate research (Brownell and Swaner 2010);
• predict psychological sense of community (Sriram, Weintraub, et al. 2020);
• support students’ academic achievement and personal development (Meyers Hoffman 2014); and
• increase students’ self-confidence in their ability to success in their coursework (Micari and Pazos 2012), among other beneficial outcomes.

And yet, even in studies of this broader category of meaningful relationships, survey data show higher education falling short. In the Center’s 2024 national survey, 20.7% of recent college graduates reported never having meaningful relationships with faculty or staff during college, and 10.8% reported never having meaningful relationships with other students. Given these gaps in meaningful relationships, it’s not surprising that 30.1% of recent college graduates reported not having any mentoring relationships in college.

It’s time to change those statistics. The process of developing mentoring relationships can be messy, challenging to scale, and variably successful. Systematic change in higher education isn’t easy. But given the immense value of mentoring relationships to their college success and life after college, higher education students need administrators, faculty, and staff to dive into this difficult work.

About Mentoring Matters

This web text explores 1) why mentoring relationships, specifically, matter in relationship-rich higher education and 2) how colleges can support students’ development of mentoring constellations—inclusive of both meaningful relationships and mentoring relationships. We draw from both national and institutional surveys about mentoring, as well as from interviews with students, staff, and faculty, and we integrate examples from varied institutional contexts so that higher ed readers can act on and adapt the web resource’s strategies for their own campuses.

At our own institution, mentoring was recently the focus of a two-year self-study in conjunction with the American Council on Education’s Learner Success Lab and a new strategic plan, Boldly Elon. In this web text, we draw on research conducted for the self-study, as well as national survey data, to address critical gaps in our knowledge. We offer a definition and a model that can be adapted across institutional contexts and highlight ways that mentoring relationships are formed and sustained through different pathways and programs. This is not a guidebook, per se, but a systematic inquiry into why mentoring relationships, specifically, matter in relationship-rich higher education and how colleges can support students’ development of mentoring constellations—with both meaningful relationships and mentoring relationships.

Because a web text gives us the flexibility to add examples, strategies, and resources over time, rather than envisioning this project as a static text, we encourage you to check back often for updates and new materials. We also invite blog post submissions that share examples of supporting students’ development of mentoring constellations across varied institutional contexts.

References

Brownell, Jayne E., and Lynn E. Swaner. 2010. Five high-impact practices: Research on learning outcomes, completion, and quality. Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Crisp, Gloria, Vicki L. Baker, Kiberly A. Griffin, Laura G. Lunsford, and Meghan J. Pifer. 2017. Mentoring Undergraduate Students: ASHE Higher Education Report 43 (1). John Wiley & Sons.

Lambert, Leo M., Jason Husser, and Peter Felten. 2018. “Mentors Play Critical Role in Quality of College Experience, New Poll Suggests.” The Conversation. August 22, 2018. https://theconversation.com/mentors-play-critical-role-in-quality-of-college-experience-new-poll-suggests-101861

Meyers Hoffman, Elin. 2014. “Faculty and Student Relationships: Context Matters.” College Teaching 62 (1): 13-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2013.817379

Micari, Marina, and Pilar Pazos. 2012. “Connecting to the Professor: Impacts of Student-Faculty Relationship in a Highly Challenging Course.” College Teaching 60 (2): 41-47.

Moore, Jessie L. 2024. “High-Impact Undergraduate Experiences and How They Matter Now: April 2024 Survey of Recent U.S. College Graduates.” Center for Engaged Learning, May 28, 2024. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/surveys/april-2024-survey/

Moore, Jessie L., Jason Husser, Kaye Usry, and Peter Felten. 2022. “Meaningful Learning Experiences and the Value of a College Degree.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. May 24, 2022. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/meaningful-learning-experiences-and-the-value-of-a-college-degree.

Ray, Julie, and Stephanie Marken. 2014. “Life in College Matters for Life after College: New Gallup-Purdue Study Looks at Links among College, Work, and Well-Being.” Gallup. May 6, 2014. http://www.gallup.com/poll/168848/life-college-matter-life-college.aspx

Sriram, Rishi, Sue D. Weintraub, Joseph Cheatle, Cliff Haynes, Joseph L. Murray, and Christopher P. Marquart. 2020. “The Influence of Academic, Social, and Deeper Life Interactions on Students’ Psychological Sense of Community. Journal of College Student Development 61 (5): 593-608. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2020.0057.

Suggested Citation

Moore, Jessie L., Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, and Tim Peeples. 2024. Mentoring Matters: Supporting Students’ Development of Mentoring Constellations in Higher Education. Center for Engaged Learning. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/mentoring-matters.